Temptation Revisited
by Lady Asvin
Summary: Fourteen years after Elizabeth last sees Jack, a strange and uneasy wind compels him to sail into Port Royal's harbor. Where will his compass point after meeting the headstrong girl Madeleine and seeing his dear Lizzie once again? Sparrowbeth.
1. Reconnaisance

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

Elizabeth Swann Turner caught her daughter gazing at her reflection again. The hand-held mirror quivered in the girl's had as she struggled to make sense of what she saw. Elizabeth sighed.

"Madeleine, love, what's all this about?" The girl of nearly fourteen slammed the mirror down furiously, rattling the reflective glass in its frame. Elizabeth took her daughter's hands; Madeleine turned, fixing her mother with fierce, crackling eyes. _His eyes_, mused Elizabeth.

"Come now," she told her daughter. "Tell me what ails you." The girl sat, head bowed, and shook her head of glossy chestnut waves. She sighed.

"Mum," she began heatedly, "every day I look into the mirror and see someone I don't know. I'm nothing like Will or Jackson, or even Annie or Della. I am definitely nothing like father. I see someone else, mum." Stopping her passionate speech, Madeleine again matched her mother's gaze with frustration and unrestrained curiosity. Elizabeth reached for a brush to tame her daughter's wild locks.

"Look at me, mum," said the girl. She held out a hand, and Elizabeth was forced to choke back a sob that rose in her throat. Madeleine's skin shone a beautiful, deep tan. Compared to her brothers and sisters, Madeleine was dark as a gypsy – a freak.

"You are a child of the sea," said Elizabeth softly. She slowly pulled the brush through her daughter's hair, taming it methodically until the girl whirled around. The brush flew across the room and into a wooden bedpost. Madeleine's face was furious.

"And just what does that mean, mum? That answers nothing!" she screamed bitterly. "What does that mean?" She stormed away; Elizabeth heard her take the stairs at a run and slam the kitchen door. She was left alone to straighten her thoughts.

-

Jack Sparrow – _Captain_ Jack Sparrow, to be precise – was walking down a side road in Port Royal when a small and rather unusually fast someone crashed headlong into his chest.

"Oomph," said the human projectile, the sound rising from deep within the folds of a cloak.

"Watch the goods," said Jack lightly. "Though there's not much _you_ could possibly damage." The little person squared its shoulders indignantly and looked up, causing the hood of the cloak to fall back. Dark waves tumbled down about the girl's face, and she raised a stubborn chin. Fixing him with eyes as dark as his own, she took a breath.

"I'll have you know, sir, that my mother was the governor's daughter. Having been so, she is quite influential and could damage far more than you'd possibly care to lose." Surprised, Jack leaned down to meet the girl's eyes.

"Yer name, love?" he asked, unused to her frank formality. The girl seemed taken aback by the question, but stuck her chin out belligerently.

"Madeleine Turner, if you please." Jack stifled a bark of bitter laughter. _To the locker with__ it all_, he thought morosely. _Nigh on fifteen years since I've set foot on this damned island and the whelp is still producing children._ And then, as an afterthought, _so much for being a eunuch._

Madeleine used the chance while the stranger was preoccupied to sidestep him and run to the cove. It was where she spent her spare time, watching the ships come in and out of the port, wishing she were free to go with them. The walls of the cove sparkled with accumulated salt deposits and the debris that washed up from the docks. As she felt herself begin to let go of the morning's quarrel, Madeleine began to sing a song her mother often hummed around the house. _Devils and black sheep, really bad eggs… drink up, me hearties, yo ho. _

-

Still tense from her episode with Madeleine, Elizabeth made her way across Port Royal in search of a butter crock. Despite seeing several in shop windows on Urding Street, not far from her home, Elizabeth was convinced she'd seen a cheaper one in the Spanish widow's shop by the docks. Thus, she made the hour walk with a purpose – and a purse hidden in her bodice.

She walked into the store and browsed for a moment, locating the crocks in a shelf near the back corner. Holding one up to the light, she was distracted for a moment by the door opening and the sight of a familiar hat. She shook her head; impossible. She almost smiled at her lapse and resumed her scrutiny of the crock; a figure swaggered by in the row next to hers, examining a set of shackles. As she looked up, so did he; meeting his gaze, she was struck senseless. _Oh my God…_ The man smiled, his deep brown eyes crackling between the webs of wrinkles at their corners.

"Lizzie." His deep baritone voice made her remember that night, almost fifteen years ago, when she'd finally given in and consummated her marriage…

_To piracy._

-

_Hot._

_It was hot._

_But not uncomfortably so. _Indeed,_ Jack thought, _not hot enough. _He stared at the girl under him… the woman under him. Married, she was, with two children, but of course it wasn't the first time he'd lured a lamb away from her shepherd. But this one was different. Promised herself to a blacksmith, one she'd once lovingly called a pirate, and here she was, moaning Jack's name and begging him to take her and be done with it… Her hair, golden brown waves, scattered over the shabby pillows. She was panting, eyes glazed over with wanton pleasure. Beautiful, she was, and he'd known it for a time; peas in a pod. Yes. The ship rocked and swayed, and Jack thrust and pulled in accommodation with the perilous waves. There was a storm over the harbor, but no amount of howling wind could erase from his ears the sounds of this woman – _his _woman – moaning his name and whimpering as her nails left patterned pathways down his back._

_"Let me go," she cried, bucking harder. "Please!" she begged him, but he was having none of it. Instead, Jack teased her to the very brink of collapse, then stopped abruptly, tracing gentle hands down her neck and following the curve of her collarbone and breasts, down to her hips and thighs. "Please," she whispered one more time, and he complied, thrusting himself into her roughly. She opened her mouth in a soundless cry as she was thrown from the heights like the devil out of heaven. Both spent, Jack leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss, moving from her lips to her abdomen. The woman's brows knit together, her forehead and cheeks shining with sweat._

_"Promise me," he'd said then, quite seriously. "Promise me if there's a child, you'll tell me." Her face relaxed. _

_"If you will come back to me, love, I promise."_

_I promise, she'd said._

_Pirates never make promises, though._

_It all went downhill from there._

-

Nine months later it was a harried and hassled Will Turner riding for the doctor, calling his sons and praying to the good Lord that his wife and child would make it through. The midwife ordered the men outside; the doctor grumbled and griped, but complied. Will paced nervously, waiting as the screams from inside his chambers reached a deafening crescendo… waiting as the silence finally took over…

A baby's wails broke the dead quiet, and Will ran into his chambers. There, a tearful Elizabeth and a red-faced infant greeted him. He picked up the child, eyes watering.

"It's a girl," said Elizabeth tiredly, her voice interrupting his thoughts. "I'm naming her Madeleine… Madeleine Pearl. Sp- Turner," she amended hurriedly. The slip went unnoticed by Will, who was too pleased with his first daughter to really give a whit what her name was. Elizabeth smiled and reached for the infant, settling her in place to suckle. _There now, Captain Sparrow, _she thought as she watched the girl's tiny pink lips acquire a rhythm and begin to suckle greedily. _She is all yours._

Miles away in a seedy tavern in Tortuga, Jack Sparrow suddenly dropped his tankard of ale and stood up, pushing off a comely serving girl who'd somehow managed to drape herself over him. Gibbs eyed his captain curiously as the irritated girl with tinted hair re-laced her bodice and made a rude gesture in his general direction.

"Cap'n?" Sweeping his hat onto his head, the pirate nodded once to his first mate.

"If it's all the same t'you mate," he said roughly, "I'm headin' back to the Pearl." Walking quickly out of the tavern, Jack could not pinpoint the reason for his sudden reluctance to join in bawdy company and his usual rum-soaking.

_It is as though,_ he thought, _a part of me is somewhere else. _

Contemplating this idea, he walked back to his ship and began to aimlessly regard his compass. He expected it to swing wildly, as had been the scenario lately, but instead watched it spin in a circle once and then point, firmly, at himself. He closed it, left it on the table, and sat on the side opposite where he had been. He opened the compass experimentally.

The arrow spun once and then pointed, again, directly at him.

_What the devil?_

Jack shook his head. _It's the rum,_ he thought, and shuffled around until his head found the blessed pillow.

-

A shadow before her snapped Elizabeth out of her reverie. Jack had moved directly in front of her, trapping her in the corner with a butter crock in her hands.

"Fifteen years," he murmured. The sound of his voice was enough to send a thrill through Elizabeth's spine, warming her in long-unused places. "Fifteen years, and not even a 'Hello, Jack' from me bonny murderess?" Elizabeth fought to pull herself together, calling on the steel she'd had once, when she'd been another girl in another time, out at sea. She almost regretted any moment of intimacy she'd ever shared with this pirate, each one making it all the more impossible to look him in the eye.

_Almost. _

Politeness never faltering, Elizabeth replaced the butter crock, pulled up a corner of her grim mouth in a mockery of a smile and curtsied.

"How do you do, Captain Sparrow?" she asked, attempting to edge her way out of the corner. Jack moved into her direct path and tilted her head up forcefully with a gentle hand.

"Jack," he said in a low voice.

"Jack," she repeated unwillingly, and with that single correction, her walls broke down. She did not even have a chance to catch her breath before she was pulled into a searing embrace. Fifteen years of repressed passion and forgotten familiarity poured into gentle hands and tight arms, and Elizabeth released a long sigh of contentment. _It depends on the day…_

Her husband's voice wormed its way into her head and Elizabeth released another sigh, this one of frustration. She broke the embrace, but a lingering hand on the curve of her hips turned her mouth into a little _o_. She tilted her head up to the pirate's, a smile curving her lips as they came within range of his.

"I'm going home, if you please," she purred, far too seductively for a married woman with children. Jack moved aside automatically as she floated serenely out the door of the shop. Reaching into his pockets, he muttered and shook his head.

"Now, where's that damned compass?"


	2. Madeleine

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

Madeleine was starving. _I'm truly, honestly going to die of starvation, _she thought moodily. For hours, she'd been holed up in a tiny corner belowdecks. She grimaced – her legs were cramping something horrid. She could just hear her mother's voice now: "That's what you get for sneaking onto a ship. A strange ship, mind." At any rate, she was hungry, and not a little seasick. It was also bloody cold. Rubbing her arms, she decided to wait until nightfall to explore the ship. She knew most of the men would have gone ashore by then.

A crashing racket intruded upon her privacy; a man had stumbled belowdecks and thrown himself into a splintery wooden chair. He flung his hat on the table, grabbed a rum bottle and observed something small and rusty he was holding in his right hand. Madeleine's heart raced. _A pirate? _And then the practical part of her brain:_ Don't be ridiculous, Maddie, what else would he be? _Frankly, the thought excited her.

After much squinting and straining, she determined that the man was, indeed, a pirate. His alcohol-reddened eyes glistened in the light of a candle he'd brought in with him, and his dreadlocked hair strained against a ragged red swatch of cloth. Wrinkling her nose, Madeleine thought the man must not have bathed in ten years. She tried to change her position, squatting to see the man better. The man opened the rusty thing – a compass? – and took a deep swig from his bottle. His eyes seemed to shine wildly with the alcohol infusion.

"Goddamn you, Elizabeth Swann!" he said loudly, causing Madeleine to pull back as if struck. _Swann? Mum's name? _She trained her hears on the drunken man.

"Blast Port Royal," he continued, downing another swig. "Fifteen years… fifteen years and you're still with the whelp!" Madeleine's eyes widened; her fingers gripped the edge of a barrel as she struggled to get closer.

"But then," he said, swinging about to a porthole. "But then, you're looking well." Sucking from his bottle, he coughed and frowned. His frustration was evident in the whiteness of his knuckles and the wildness of his dark eyes.

"You're trapped, love!" He was shouting now. "They've got you trapped! Society and all those…" He slumped down in the chair and opened his compass.

"Fifteen years, and you're still my charming murderess... still exactly what I want."

Madeleine crouched, frozen. This man… he frightened her, but she felt a pull, a familiarity with him that surprised her. He was drunk, maudlin, and rank, but she couldn't help but feel pity and an unexpected sense of regret when she observed him.

_How interesting, _she thought, and ignored her throbbing legs to observe more.

-

A welter of emotions crushed Elizabeth's thoughts as she made her way to the smithy. She had come home, heart pounding, afraid someone would discover her nervous state; but the afternoon passed without incident as she prepared a lunch basket for her husband and tea for her daughters. _Seeing him again… _It killed her more to realize that although he didn't know it, she'd hurt him – was hurting him – beyond compare. She came into Will's shop through the alley door, wiping her watery eyes with her apron. The basket lunch she'd miraculously managed to keep on her arm she put in a lean-to, hanging it on a nail.

She came into the main smithy. Seeing him hunched over the furnace brought a bitter grin to her face. He was everything a husband should be; dependable, diligent, a good provider, and even – her grin tightened – handsome. She tapped his shoulder, startling him, and was treated to a loving smile as she tucked a stray hair behind his ear. She kissed him on the cheek and left the shop quickly. _I love Will. I love Will. He saved me… he gave ten years for me… _Shaking her head quickly, she took long strides and reached her house on Willowing Street sooner than she expected. Before she could even pick up the bell on the hall table, the servant girl was flying down the stairs, tear-streaked face contorted into a terrified expression.

"What is the matter, Ílse?" The island girl's pupils contracted in fear of the reaction her news would elicit.

"Beggin' your pardon, Miz Turner," she said quickly, her thick island accent coloring her English. "Miz Madeleine gone missin'," She hung her head and twisted an index finger around the corner of her apron. "Ah went to bring in Della an' Anamaria, ma'am, and wasn't no one there watchin' them. Ah figger she run off somewhere." She dropped into a low courtesy, but the look on Elizabeth's face prompted a quick rise.

"Can ah- can ah get you anythin', Miz Turner? Let me take your shawl…" Elizabeth allowed herself to be led to the parlor and seated before she began to give orders.

"Ílse? Ílse!" The serving girl scurried before her. "Send a messenger to the commodore, and another to Jackson and William. I want them on the docks, searching for her – the fool girl often strays there on errands. I want Madeleine found before some ill-intentioned miscreant takes her off this island." Ílse began a curtsy, but was stopped midway.

"There's no time for that nonsense, go!" The terrified girl fled, scattering the petals of a wilting flower she had brushed with her skirt. Elizabeth herself changed into a worn cotton gown and fairly ran to Will's shop – at the very moment she left her home, news was reaching William Turner that Jack Sparrow was back in Port Royal.

-

Will had just turned away from a dock worker picking up a mended scimitar when his wife burst through the front door of the smithy and informed him that their oldest daughter was missing. He sent her home and grimly closed up shop. The dock worker with the scimitar had helped unload casks of wine from the ship next to one that hadn't been seen in Port Royal in fifteen years.

"It's the Pearl," he'd said thickly, spitting into a bucket at the front of the smithy. "Slice off me head if it ain't!" Eyes narrowed, Will holstered a flintlock pistol in his belt and patted his boots to ensure that his knives were present. Retying his hair with a leather thong, Will's expression was hard and unyielding.

"Not again, Jack," he said aloud. "I will not let you take another one I love!" For although all had been settled that night in Tia Dalma's – Calypso's – shack in the bayou, and later on that hellish voyage back to the land of the living, where Elizabeth explained that kissing Jack was only a means to ensure their safety, Will was no fool. He knew Elizabeth's empty eyes and automatic movements for months afterward were the price she paid; she'd lost a piece of her heart that day. Her wildness, the part of her that yearned for the sea's freedom – she'd left it with a rogue she'd tied to a mast, one who'd rather save his own skin than give a thought to anyone else's.

Ironically, Will's next thought was one of a conversation he'd had with Jack upon first meeting him.

_Cheater!_

_Pirate._

-

The captain of the Black Pearl stared morosely at his dagger. Then at an empty rum bottle on the table before him. Back to the dagger. The pattern continued until he finally took the dagger and poised it against the tendons of his neck – a small gasp escaped a dark, barrel-filled corner of the cabin. Shifting his eyes and frowning, Jack again lifted the dagger to his throat. Another gasp, smaller this time, issued from the dark. The pirate got heavily to his feet and slowly made his way to the offending corner.

Hefting a barrel out of the way, another one toppled over to reveal a girl, crouched in a fetal position and near blue from the cold.

"Bloody hell," said the Captain, trying to work his mind around it. He debated leaving her there, but his inebriated mind finally grasped the fact that he knew the girl. It was the Turner girl. _Marcheline? Mariselle? _No – Madeleine. Dropping the dagger, he picked the girl up and bodily carried her to his hammock. With another exclamation of "bloody hell," he draped his own coat, stiff with salt, over her. The girl didn't say a word but followed his movements with sharp eyes. It wasn't until he'd brought a bottle of rum to her lips that they parted, cracked and bleeding, to let her speak.

"No thank you," she said. "I prefer not to drink." Struck by the absurdity of the situation, Jack huffed and kept the rum bottle under her nose.

"Why the devil not," he growled, terrified as her skin continued to fade to a dusty blue. The girl fixed him with her dark gaze.

"Because drinking is vile and turns even the most educated gentleman into a complete-"

"Scoundrel," finished Jack, mouth twitching. The girl let her eyes slide closed.

"Yes," was the last thing to escape her lips before she sank back down into the hammock. She was getting bluer by the second, and Jack was getting anxious. He pressed his eyes closed in frustration, and eventually began to rub the girl's arms and legs vigorously, trying to get her blood moving. Her eyes seemed to be the only thing alive in her face; for most of his ministrations, they stared piercingly at him from her tanned and impassive face. Jack rocked back and forth on his heels and sighed; he was no expert in healthcare, and when it came to women…

Even miniature women.

In an act of desperation, the pirate scooped up the girl and held her tight, as he would an infant. For a moment, he felt an irrational fear of letting go; muffled giggles interrupted the gratuitous urge. Jack held out the girl to see her face, and noticed a blush breaking through her blue pallor.

"I'm not sure that's an entirely proper action for a young lady and a rough sea man to be engaging in," she laughed. "Oomph!" Jack had dropped her unceremoniously back into the hammock.

"Well then , my bonny lass, I'm not sure it's entirely proper for you to be on my ship, and I'm sure I won't have to ask you to get off twice because you're a good girl and you'll go right home, savvy?" Despite the dumping, Madeleine's curiosity was aroused and her body heat was returning.

"No." She looked defiantly at the pirate. "I've never been on a ship before. My mum and father don't allow it." Jack almost laughed at that – the daughter of the Pirate King and her husband, ferryman of souls, not allowed on a ship? – but managed to keep his face in a sneer.

"Well that's a pretty shame," said Jack. "But you see, that isn't my problem. That's Lizzie and young Will's problem." Madeleine's interest was piqued.

"That's another thing – you know my parents." Jack rolled his eyes, and the girl noticed for the first time that they were lined with Kohl.

"They are quite well known in Port Royal, love." Madeleine hissed angrily.

"Don't give me that. You _know_ them. Nobody – not even father – calls mum 'Lizzie.' And her maiden name? You knew my parents before they married." _Bugger__**, **_thought Jack. _She's smart. I'll have to keep me knife sharp with this one. _

"Look, Miss Turner. I haven't been to Port Royal in fif…" his voice died as a thought occurred to him. "How old are you, lass?" Madeleine's brow furrowed.

"Fourteen in a fortnight," she said at last. The world buzzed around Jack's ears. He didn't think… no, he wouldn't think. It wasn't possible – Elizabeth hadn't said anything. And she'd promised, hadn't she? She'd promised that if…

Madeleine looked at him curiously, and the more she met his gaze the more Jack was convinced he was getting the false end of the story and the short end of the stick. He leaned close to the girl and smiled.

"Welcome to the Pearl, love," he said, running a dirty hand through Madeleine's dark, thick hair.

-


	3. Hurricane

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

The clock in the center of Port Royal was chiming seven in the evening when an anonymous figure in breeches and a floppy hat stole onto the docks. The figure paced up and down, slinking from place to place, never settling until – _there she was. The Pearl. _A stray breeze toppled the figure's hat, releasing a mass of thin, golden-brown waves tied back with an unbleached linen kerchief. Although she didn't think anyone had seen her, Elizabeth hurried to pick up the hat and hide behind a cargo of barrels just waiting to be loaded onto the ship. _Her_ ship. She waited until the watchman turned his head away from her hiding place; creeping along behind cargo of all kinds, including a giant cage stocked with bright yellow canaries, she finally steeled herself and fled up the gangplank of the Pearl.

She stopped short at the first cannon, tipping back her hat and breathing in the sea. If anyone saw the woman dressed like a man, with streaming hair and refined features, clinging onto a rope like a sailor, they made no mention of it.

Breathing out, Elizabeth opened her eyes and observed the salty deck, rusting metal and weathered wood that made up the Pearl.

_I'm finally home._

-

For a moment, Jackson Turner thought he saw his mother – clad in men's clothing, no less – clambering up the gangplank of a ship. He shook his head to clear his vision; deciding the setting sun must have been playing tricks with his mind, he told himself that his straight-laced mother was probably sitting in her parlor, worrying over tea and fretting about Madeleine.

_Stupid girl. Stupid fascination with the sea. _Making a quick about-face, Jackson turned back toward his father's smithy. Madeleine, as far as he knew, was nowhere to be found.

-

The straight-laced mother in question was poking her head out from behind the door of the captain's quarters when the captain himself literally slammed into her at full speed. Her face was rammed into the pirate's compass, making her squeak and stopping Jack short. The hat had skittered off her head, and she was clutching at her cheekbone with a pained expression. Another person collided into the mess, not having seen the sudden stop of her new mate.

"Elizabeth?" Jack seemed surprised. Madeleine poked her head around him, narrowly avoiding his elbow.

"Mum?" Confusion erupted among the three, sparing none in its intensity.

"Maddie? Jack?" Elizabeth's head swiveled wildly, meeting both dark expressions for a moment, and then swinging on to the next. _This is my worst nightmare incarnate, _she realized, and met Jack's eyes again. His expression became hard.

"Lizzie, I believe we need to talk -" She nodded furiously, but cut him off.

"In a moment." She stuck her chin out at Madeleine. "Maddie, go play on the upper deck." The girl would have protested, but something in her mother's wild eyes made her reconsider. Instead, she turned tail and ran for the deck; Jack helped Elizabeth up until they faced each other squarely. It was a most uncomfortable situation. Jack took control, opening the cabin door and leading the woman in breeches toward the only chair. He elected to stand by a porthole, dark eyes brooding as he waited for an explanation. His anger was barely repressed, seeping into Elizabeth stealthily – a burglar in her own mind.

"It… It's been a long time," she offered, voice trailing off. He turned to her, lips pursed, eyebrows drawn together in a mask of fury.

"No letter," he began, barely audible. "No message. She's mine," he said, trapping Elizabeth between his arms as he grabbed the back of her chair. His eyes burned into hers. "I know she is." Elizabeth was silent, unable to defend herself. It was all true, a web of her own making.

"She looks just like me…" Elizabeth almost smiled at that; as she grew older, Madeleine took on traits and mannerisms that, combined with her dark coloring and sharp tongue, produced the image of a miniature, female version of a certain visibly enraged pirate. His wrath was palpable; tension seeped into the room quickly, unbearable in its concentration. Elizabeth looked down at her hands.

"Jack… I wanted to keep her. I didn't…" She faltered. "I couldn't have you take her from me." The pirate tightened his grip on the chair, causing Elizabeth to turn her head up. His eyes, wide with disbelief, met hers.

"'S that what you believed?" he asked incredulously. "That I'd take her? Is that it, then, you didn't trust old Jack? Even with the rather important secret of his own child?" His betrayed tone forced tears from Elizabeth's captive eyes. She implored him silently to see her decision on her own terms.

"You have to understand," she whispered brokenly. "She was all I had of you!" Her voice rising, Elizabeth trembled with the weight of a long-kept secret. "She is still all I have of you!" Crying openly, Elizabeth raised a shaking hand to trace the pirate's jaw. Jack's intensity subsided; he was always wary of a woman's tears.

"Love-" he began, but was stopped cold.

"Don't." Elizabeth's voice had changed. It was flat and vicious, ready to cut him open. "Don't call me love." Jack opened his mouth to protest, but thought the better of it as he observed the abrupt movements of his hostage.

"You do not love me any more than you love living on land or walking to the gallows." Her gaze turned to steel, and he swallowed the sharp remark he'd been planning concerning his prior walks to the gallows.

"You gave me freedom for one night," she continued coldly, standing so quickly Jack was forced to step back. Her face was almost touching his. "One night! The next morning, _Captain _Sparrow, I was back in the iron shackles of life on land." She spat the words at him, twisting his name into mocking curse.

"How do you think it feels, _love_, to fly back into a gilded birdcage, after you've had a taste of paradise?" Her lips were so close to his, slicing him deep with each sharp word. Her shaking hands found their place on her hips.

"But if I had known…" he said, unable to string together a coherent thought, waiting for inspiration. It was the wrong thing to say.

"You _did_ know!" she screeched, throwing her hands up. "You left me wanting you, tasting the sea on your skin and the salt on your lips. You _knew _how I felt!" Coloring, Elizabeth shoved Jack out of the way, pacing the room as she formulated her next thought. Finally, she fixed him with an unforgiving glare.

"You are just an abuser," she enunciated, giving full emphasis to every word. "Just like every other wobbly-legged, rum-soaked-" Jack crossed the room and placed a finger over her lips.

"Pirate," he supplied, and tilted her head up to his. Her eyes were hurt and defiant, but behind the obvious lay a vulnerability that had never been more appealing to Jack Sparrow than at that moment.

"This isn't about us," Elizabeth said, sighing. Jack lowered her chin with his finger.

"You're quite right," he murmured congenially. "This is about my daughter." Raising an eyebrow, Elizabeth yanked at one of the pirate's dreadlocks.

"_Our _daughter," she clarified. Jack's eyes softened, and he surprised Elizabeth by pulling her up and carrying her, holding her as close as he had been holding his daughter mere hours before.

"You'll have to tell me all about her, you know," he said softly. "What is she like? Who does she take after?" He dropped Elizabeth unceremoniously in his hammock. "Is Will suspicious?" The mention of her husband threw a sudden cloud over Elizabeth's thoughts, but she shook it off and crooked a finger at Jack.

The meaning was clearer than a calm sea.

As he joined her on the hammock, Elizabeth smiled and traced his jaw with her index finger. He sighed, and she replaced her finger with her lip; Jack, however, would not be deterred.

"Our daughter?" he insisted, and soft laughter burbled up from Elizabeth's throat.

"Oh, Jack," she said quietly. "She's so like you."

-

Madeleine was hanging onto a ladder when a rich laugh interrupted her thoughts. She swung around to meet the friendly gaze of a boy, dark as she, with a few spidery wrinkles around his smiling eyes. He dropped from the rigging to the deck, and bowed lightly.

"Can I request your company, _señorita_?" Smiling back, Madeleine nodded and followed his murmured orders – _climb here, watch that rope, a bit farther now _– panting as the two finally reached the crow's nest.

"I can understand why they call it the crow's nest," declared Madeleine. "Unless you've got wings, it's near impossible to get up!" The girl rummaged in her bodice for a moment, finally fishing out a handkerchief with which to wipe her dewy forehead.

"You grow accustomed," drawled the boy. He smiled at the fine handkerchief and offered her one made of rough linen. "Works better for the sweat," he explained, as she looked at him strangely. When she had finally caught her breath, Madeleine stood, arms around the mast, taking in the view.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, amazed. She watched the crystal waves dance into her very own hometown harbor, sparkling as they hit the sand and docks, and then foaming back until the next push. A whoosh of air escaped her lips, corners tugging up in a serene smile. The boy watched her intently, his dark eyes taking in her field of vision in one sweep. He turned to observe her again. Her dress swirled around her ankles; although evidently not her finest one, the delicately spun linen was still finer than any he'd ever known. Her feet were bare; he remembered her leaving her thin slippers at the bottom of the rope ladder.

"I'm happy you like it," was all he managed for a moment, as he caught sight of her shining hair caught in a stray breeze. For the first time, Madeleine turned to face the boy directly.

"I hadn't noticed your accent until now," she said shyly. He was suddenly disoriented by the girl's long lashes, framing dark brown eyes with a slight slant to them. She tried again.

"Do you at least have a name, so I can thank you for bringing me here?" The boy snapped out of it and bowed, as far as the tiny space would allow.

"I am Joaquin," he said slowly, straightening. Madeleine smiled softly; his name was different, one not often heard around Port Royal.

"Well then," she said. "Thank you, Joaquin, for showing me this view." The formal thanks hung in the air, making it heavy, until curiosity got the best of Madeleine.

"How old are you?" she blurted, blushing scarlet as the impolite question hit its mark. The boy looked surprised, but not offended.

"Almost sixteen," he replied, and seemed to think about something. "I am Spanish," he added then. "You asked about my accent before. Although to me, everyone else has an accent, and I am in the right." He smiled tentatively, and Madeleine grinned back.

"That's exactly how I felt when I went to the colonies with my brother William to pick up his wife," Madeleine confided. Joaquin laughed, and the tension was suddenly lifted.

"How did you come to be on this ship?" asked Madeleine. Joaquin winced, and Madeleine opened her mouth to apologize for the sore spot she had evidently touched. He spoke before she could arrange the words.

"I could ask you the same question," said Joaquin slowly. "But to answer you, my mother used to be friends with the captain. Or something of the sort," he amended, blushing crimson. "She died when I was twelve, but not before sending a message to the good _capitán_. She was barely underground when he told me to board or be left behind." Madeleine could hear wistful longing in the boy's voice when he spoke of his mother. As if reading her thoughts, Joaquin shook his head.

"There was nothing for me in Spain," he said. "Over there, Anamaria Calle was nothing but an abandoned wife and hired servant, and her boy a nuisance." He stuck out his chin. "I'm proud to be serving aboard the _Pearl_." He leaned on the railing, and Madeleine couldn't help but notice his strong, tanned arms under the loose, shift-like shirt he wore. His hair, black and stiff with salt, was yanked back into a tail at the nape of his neck. She sighed, and he eyed her questioningly.

"Perhaps this is why mother spends her every waking moment warning me about the sea, and pirates, and the docks," she murmured quietly. She took another look at the harbor; the sun was sinking now, casting the western sky in a swirl of oranges, pinks, and grays.

"Why do you say that, _querida_?" Joaquin's deep voice startled her as it came from directly next to her ear. She faced him squarely.

"It's enough to make a lass fall in love," she replied, and was surprised to have her serious answer met with a rich laugh.

"She warns you with good reason," said the boy, and it was only now that Madeleine remembered that he was not much older than she. "The sea is a tempting mistress, and pirates aren't the friendliest lot – or the safest, or the cleanest," he added, laughing again. Madeleine frowned, sticking out her lower lip.

"But she seems to know the captain," she protested, and saw Joaquin's brows shoot together over his eyes.

"Perhaps she never intended _you_ to," he said pointedly. Against all sense of maturity, Madeleine stuck her tongue out at Joaquin.

"At least one good thing came of this," she said, putting a tan hand over his darker one on the railing.

"Oh?" he asked, aware that his heart was, absurdly, reacting to the girl's touch with a massive stampede of beats. Their eyes met.

"I made a new friend," she said lightly, and removed her hand. "Come on. I want to see the rest of the ship." Faintly aware that he had just thrown in his lot with the minx, Joaquin helped her descend the rope ladder, always two rungs below.

-

In the captain's cabin, a pressing heat barely allowed for breathing. Between stolen kisses, sweet caresses, and fifteen years' worth of conversation, the hammock's sheets were in disarray and its inhabitants wore nothing more than a thin sheen of sweat. A lapse in the dialogue was an adequate excuse for the roguish Jack to pull Elizabeth's head to his and thoroughly explore her lips and mouth with his own. The woman – if she hadn't told him herself, he'd never believe she had five children – smiled into his lips and matched his intensity with her own.

Somewhere above them, a bell rang – once, twice – and stopped. Those occupied in the cabin didn't even notice until the bell began to clang again, furiously, a constant sound that jarred Elizabeth's ears. Jack stood up so fast, she could have sworn he'd been branded.

"Hurricane bell," he said, throwing her a sidelong glance as he wrangled with his clothing. "Storm's afoot." Elizabeth herself stood, roughly pulling up her breeches and fixing her shirt. Jack saw her preparing and frowned.

"Can't have that," he muttered. Elizabeth glared at him. "_Stay here_," he said slowly. "Or 't least… don't go out there," he emphasized, and pointed dramatically with both hands.

"Don't be ridiculous Jack. I need to get Madeleine, anyway." Jack was already walking out of the cabin.

"I'll send her down," he said, and slammed the door. Elizabeth heard him shouting orders as he went. Not one to follow directions, Elizabeth yanked on her sturdy boots and wrapped the kerchief tighter around her head. She abandoned her hat to the hammock and strode out of the cabin.

When the warning bell had sounded, Madeleine and Joaquin had been rummaging through the galley. Finding nothing to their liking, and noting that the bell's clang grew ever more urgent, they emerged from the galley and headed for the main deck. A frenzy of activity alerted them that something was grievously wrong, but they had no chance to explore before Elizabeth clapped a gentle hand on Madeleine's shoulder. Meeting her eyes, Madeleine was suddenly afraid – her mother was never shaken, and her gaze was nervous now.

"Look out," she said softly, and both Madeleine and Joaquin followed orders. Their eyes met with a large expanse of water. It took them moments to see the problem.

The mooring lines were trailing loose behind the ship; the hurricane bell was clanging.

"Oh, my God."

"_Madre del amor hermoso._"

There was a storm afoot, and the _Pearl_ was heading out to open sea.

-


	4. Untold

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

From the door of his smithy, William Turner nodded in satisfaction as he watched the _Pearl_ sail away. _Looks like Jack decided to make his visit brief_, he thought mildly, and smiled grimly as he returned to his shop. A red-faced urchin threw himself in the door before it closed, intercepting him.

"Be you William Turner?" asked the boy anxiously, dancing from foot to foot with the patience of a butterfly.

"Yes…" said Will, not sure what the boy wanted from him. He put a hand over his purse, hidden within the coarse fabric of his breeches.

"I been sent by th' younger William Turner," said the boy, elongating his name and pronouncing it "Will-yumm." "To infohm you of some terrible happ'nin's, suh." Will was growing impatient; in three minutes of talking, the boy had told him nothing.

"Yes, boy," he said, attempting to remain at least civil. The urchin stopped bouncing.

"Young master William says t' tell you that there's a storm stirrin', and that yer missus an' miss Madeleine are on that ship yonder. The mooring lines' been cut, suh, an' they headin' out." For a moment, Will feared his heart had stopped. In the next breath, his head ran with schemes to bring back his wife and daughter, each more ludicrous than the last.

"Elizabeth… Madeleine," he whispered, sounding far more broken than he cared to let on. The urchin looked at him, pity in his eyes.

"They's headin' out t' sea now, master Turner," repeated the boy. And William wondered when the world had turned upside down, that a street urchin should pity _him_ and not the other way around.

-

Madeleine turned from the horrid sight to catch her mother gazing at the captain, eyes softer than she had ever seen them before. The girl felt like an intruder; Elizabeth had never given that look to her husband on land. A soft smile graced the woman's face as she watched him shout orders, majestic as he was; when their eyes met, Madeleine could almost hear the crackle of intensity.

"He's a sight, isn't he," said Joaquin, noticing Elizabeth's gaze. The woman snapped out of it and drew her entire forty-three years into her stature. Madeleine saw where this was going and opened her mouth, but her mother beat her to the kill.

"Who are you," she said, dropping the words poisonously. "And – don't trifle with me, lad – what are your intentions with my daughter?" The boy was not at all cowed by Elizabeth's rough handling of the situation.

"I am Joaquin Castillon," he said squarely. "I am a pirate. And as for the little lass," he added cheekily, "I intend to make her a pirate also, unless you have any objections." To Madeleine's surprise, Elizabeth smiled. Where were her passionate speeches against seafaring, pirates, danger?

"None at all. Joaquin… I knew a woman once, on this very ship, who married off the coast of Portugal." Elizabeth became thoughtful. "I helped her deliver her first son. She named him Joaquin, also." Joaquin looked as though he had swallowed something bitter, but his curiosity overcame his apprehension.

"My mother married my father in Portugal," he began hesitantly. "And I am her only son." Elizabeth fixed him with a stern gaze.

"Anamaria?" Joaquin nodded furiously. "Is she…?" The boy nodded soberly.

"Died a few years back of the rot and a broken heart." Elizabeth's eyes shone with unshed tears, and she wordlessly embraced the son of her late crewmember. Somewhere above, the bell began to clang again.

"Go Joaquin. Madeleine will join you shortly." Madeleine's eyes turned to Elizabeth's questioningly, but the woman revealed nothing. Gazing after the boy's back, she realized that freedom was a double-edged sword.

"Responsibility must temper passion," she muttered, the mantra from some long-forgotten women's advice book. Madeleine looked at her mother curiously and followed her back to the captain's quarters.

-

William Turner was in a rage, throwing tools from the smithy into their respective wooden bins. His pacing was making his second eldest son nervous; the eldest had given up hours ago, leaving his wife at their shuttered apartment, closing his tannery and abandoning his father and brother to help the men shuttering the public buildings.

"Those blasted, thrice-cursed, bloody _pirates_!" he seethed, agitating the donkey that kept braying next to Jackson. The boy of seventeen patted the donkey, wondering privately if his father would continue to rage throughout the storm. Port Royal was on a hurricane watch – anyone foolish enough to go out-of-doors once the storm began would be ripped to shreds. As it was, though… he looked at his father. _Perhaps I should consider my chances._ Outwardly, he tried to stay positive.

"They'll be fine," he said tiredly. "'Twas not a ship of ill repute, and the storm shouldnae harm a good captain." His father rounded on him.

"'Tis not the _storm_ what worries me, Jack. Nor is it the skill of the captain, for I have sailed under the very man." Jackson looked at his father curiously, never ceasing to stroke the high-strung donkey.

"'Tis Elizabeth what worries me," he admitted so softly, Jackson almost missed it. Will sighed deeply, and Jackson remembered something his father had said to his brother when he was leaving with his pregnant wife: _Would you leave Katrina and the child in the care of a rogue?_

Will resumed his nervous pace.

-

The rain fell like whiplash. Elizabeth and Joaquin strained against a rope, lowering the sails along with the rest of the crew. Elizabeth had abandoned Madeleine to the task of chasing stray livestock back into the hold. Taxing her muscles to their limits, Elizabeth realized that her hands were bleeding mightily; the calluses of hard work long disappeared. But no hand was spared for a storm of this magnitude; steeling herself, Elizabeth pulled harder.

"Lower the sails! Shift the ballast center! Look alive, men, you're not here on holiday!" Jack shouted orders at his men from the wheel, straining against it as furiously as Elizabeth strained against the rope. Madeleine appeared at the captain's side, skirts billowing and hair flying in a tangle of waves. _I must get her changed out of that absurd clothing_, thought Elizabeth, and sighed – that had been the plan until both had been given strict orders. Jack noticed the girl beside him. Fighting an irrational wave of panic, he signaled Elizabeth and Joaquin.

"Boy, take the women belowdecks. String them some hammocks. Elizabeth, you and he are on second shift." Joaquin nodded, but Madeleine was not going to be ignored.

"And my orders, captain?" she asked, face revealing her stubbornness. Her hard eyes met Jack's, boring into them. "I refuse to sit idle." _That girl is uncannily like her mother_, thought Jack, but replied in kind.

"Second shift, then, as well. _Stay out of the way_." Jack turned from them, and Elizabeth and Madeleine followed the youth as he made his way below the main deck. As he left them alone to string up hammocks, Madeleine turned her gaze to her mother, curious as to her situation. Elizabeth, fighting a rising feeling of guilt, met her dark eyes with lighter ones.

"We've quite a tale to cover, mum, haven't we?" The innocence of the question caught Elizabeth off guard. She nodded, but before saying anything pointed to her daughter's skirts.

"We have to take care of those, first," she said, pinching the fabric. "I've been on a ship with a dress. 'Tis bad luck, and a nuisance to boot." The woman looked around, but saw nothing she could use to her advantage. Turning back to her daughter, she pursed her lips.

"Stay here. When I return, you should be in your band and knickers only." Madeleine nodded and began to remove layers, while Elizabeth made her way deeper belowdecks to search out Joaquin and ask him for spare clothing. She found him testing the last hammock, as it were, but he quickly turned to the task at hand upon seeing Elizabeth. Between the two of them, they procured coarse cotton breeches Joaquin had outgrown, a longish, patched shirt that at some point in the past had been dyed black, a swatch of cloth to use as a belt, sturdy boots – those had been the hardest to find, as only two of the men on board had spares – and a kerchief to bind Madeleine's irrepressible hair. Elizabeth smiled at her haul and returned to where her daughter was waiting.

"Here," she said, laying all the clothing on the ground. "I can only teach you how to do this once. Then, it's sleep for a few hours and work for too many more." Madeleine understood.

"All's well, then… breeches first. Over your knickers, that's right. Now the shirt – it'll be a bit long, but we can't be choosy at present." As she helped her daughter into the alien clothing, Elizabeth had a sense that destiny was unabashedly kicking her in the rear. _For all the warnings_, she mused, _I still find myself on a ship, chasing after my daughter_. She couldn't be properly surprised, however – the feeling just didn't fit when she'd known that something of the sort would eventually happen.

Once Madeleine was dressed, Elizabeth tied the kerchief around her head and sent her stumbling toward the hammock. The wind was getting worse – Elizabeth could hear it howling above her head, whipping those on deck. She shivered violently, trying to forget the last time she'd been in a storm of this size.

_On this very ship_, she mused. _But I was the Pirate King then, and the storm was caused by a goddess scorned. _The absurdity of that statement almost made her laugh, but she instead dedicated herself to collecting Madeleine's land things – _something she won't make use of for a good while, _she thought – and heading for a hammock herself.

-

The whistle for second shift sounded. Jack, soaked to the bone, held onto the ship's wheel with all his strength, trying to steer a straight course through the storm. The rain made it almost impossible to see, and the change in men went practically unnoticed.

"Fahzeri! Waring! Your rope's too slack, haul back!" The rope was yanked back as though possessed, although Jack now noticed that Fahzeri and Waring were not the men pulling it. The devil wind whipped the first figure's hair back, and its outline was definitely feminine. Jack looked behind her to see the second figure, a slight, young male, straining at the rope as she was. _Curse it all, didn't I say to keep out of the way? _

"_Man o'erboard!_" Shrieked a voice from the crow's nest. "Port side! Man o'erboard!" Jack looked desperately around the ship to see who could be ordered to rescue whatever soul had been tossed, and saw that Elizabeth was already running across the deck with a measure of heavy rope in her hands. She tied the rope into a noose and swung it into the water; Jack's stomach rolled slightly when she had to reel it back in and throw it out, farther this time.

"Blast it all, Gibbs, _hold on_!" Jack could hear her scream faintly, and the rope snapped tightly as the man in the water managed a grasp. Elizabeth pulled, but Jack knew she'd be no match for the roiling waves.

"Joaquin!" He roared, seeing the boy struggling to get his rope down. "Tie down your rope. Assist Elizabeth!" The boy nodded, but it was Madeleine who responded to the order faster. Putting all her weight against the soggy rope, Madeleine forced it down to a metal ring. Her hands were chapped and bleeding, but she ignored them in an effort to tie the rope tightly.

"You tie it down, I don't know knots," she yelled to Joaquin after a moment. "I'll go help mum." With that, she abandoned him to the task and ran to pick up the trailing end of her mother's lasso.

"Haul back!" screamed Elizabeth. "_Haul back!_" The women, hands bleeding, fought against blinding rain to pull the old man back on deck. A roar of thunder crashed around their ears, and perilous waves sluiced over the sides of the ship. Their boots slid, inch by inch, threatening to dump them overboard as well.

"Almost, Maddie! Once more! _Haul!_" With a final, desperate pull, Elizabeth and Madeleine managed to yank a gasping, spluttering Joshamee Gibbs back onto the main deck. Ready to cry, Elizabeth leaned down to hug the soaked old man. Turning a tear-streaked face to her daughter, Elizabeth attempted to make the man sit up.

"Madeleine, this is Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs… this is my daughter, Madeleine Pearl." The old man smiled, his tiny eyes stretching at the corners. "I've known Mr. Gibbs since I was younger than you," Elizabeth explained. _Although in reality, _thought Madeleine, _that explains nothing._

"Nice t' meet you, lass." The man turned to Elizabeth before Madeleine could reply in kind.

"Well, Miss Swann… I imagine you're still Mrs. Turner, rather… truth be told, she looks nothin' like her father." Elizabeth's smile faltered, but her eyebrows rose skeptically.

"She looks exactly like her father, Mr. Gibbs," said Elizabeth quietly. He looked confused for a moment, as if too many years of rotgut whiskey and cheap rum had addled his brains beyond basic thought; Madeleine, who had not heard her mother's statement, decided to make herself heard.

"I look nothing like my father, sir," she exclaimed in an effort to prove her mother wrong. But the man was suddenly looking pointedly at the captain of the _Pearl_, who struggled with the ship's wheel on the upper deck. He turned to face her slowly, craning his neck to take her in better. For the first time, he noticed her dark eyebrows, strong and expressive; her chestnut waves, plastered to her back by the rain; her slightly hooked nose and those eyes, mysterious and deep, curious, never satisfied with the ordinary.

"No, lass… you are his spitting image." Madeleine threw her head back and barked a laugh.

"Water damage," she told her mother loudly. "Let's get him belowdecks." Elizabeth gave her a curious look just then, a mix between frustration, pain, and a longing to say something; even so, she helped Madeleine stand the older man up.

"Don't fuss over me, ladies," said Gibbs. "I'm fit as a fiddle. What say we help old Jack weather this thunderstorm, aye?" The women nodded and looked at the man on the upper deck.

"Jack!" yelled Elizabeth. "Orders!" If he heard nothing else, he heard the request for orders; steeling himself against the sheeting rain, he used a hand to tip his hat a bit farther down his forehead.

"Store the canvas!" he bellowed. "Roll the cannons center! We need a solid balance point for this snuffbox!" As they ran to fulfill their duties, they heard a last order drift down from the ship's wheel: "_And for godsakes, Elizabeth, bandage your hands and drink some rum!_" Madeleine could barely get used to her mother being called by any name other than Mrs. Turner. Running to get to the sails, Madeleine felt Joaquin catch up to them. He uncorked a leather skin and offered her a sip. Madeleine eyed it cautiously, a lifetime of warnings against impropriety and alcohol battering her already abused wits.

"Take it," she heard her mother shout. "You'll need it." Madeleine took a sip and felt warmth spread through her veins; feeling brave, she took another sip and then corked the skin. Turning to Joaquin, she licked her lips, running her tongue along the edge of her white teeth. Her eyes slanted as she turned them his way, smoldering full force.

"Thank you," she said in a low voice. His eyebrows flew up, and his lips curved into a delicious smile. _Is this minx trying to get me in trouble?_

"You're welcome, _señorita_," he said, and shoved the flask into his waistband.

"Madeleine Pearl!" she heard her mother shriek from halfway up a mast. "Get up here and help with the sails!" Shooting another smile at Joaquin, Madeleine climbed up the ladder her mother was on and scrambled onto some side ropes to lash the sail to the mast.

"We're going to have to roll up the ladder and swing down," shouted Elizabeth after a few moments of furious straining and tying. "It's to be pulled in as well!" Madeleine felt a sudden, irrational fear as her mother made the pronouncement. _I could die here_, she realized, the full weight of the storm catching up with her. _The storm hasn't even really begun, and someone's already been thrown overboard! _Something told her that she was worrying for naught, but fourteen years of nothing to do but worry had left her with the annoying habit.

_Mum won't let anything happen to me_, she tried to convince herself. Seeing the ease with which her mother handled the ropes, Madeleine continued her thought: _She's done this before._

The implications of that concept had not come to her until the moment she was hanging onto a rope, her mother on one side, Joaquin on the other, swinging down from a forty-foot mast with nothing but a piece of overwrought string in her bloody hands.

-


	5. Truth

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

"_Will!_" The younger William Turner's wife waddled to him as quickly as she could, relief evident in all her features. A distended pregnant belly had her maneuvering carefully to walk through the apartment without hitting anything.

"It's fine," murmured Will, patting his wife's head. "I'm fine." The girl's shoulders were shaking.

"You didn't come home for so long," she said quietly. "I thought – well, anything could have happened – did you find your sister?" The younger William shook his head angrily. He brushed past his wife to plunk himself down gracelessly on a wooden chair before the hearth.

"Stupid gypsy girl," he muttered. "Stupid fascination with the sea." He turned to his expectant wife, watching as shadows from a lantern cast shadows across her face.

"She got herself stranded on the ship," he explained testily. "The one that hasn't been around Port Royal since I was a boy of eight. And of course, mother went chasing after the little fool." Expecting empathy from his wife, Will was shocked and not a little angry when he saw the piercing glare coming from across the apartment.

"What, Katrina?" he asked, losing patience after such a trying day. Her twenty-year-old shoulders stiffened and her eyes narrowed.

"I hope," she said, voice trembling, "I hope when our child is born, nobody ever – ever! – refers to him or her as a fool or a gypsy!" She lifted herself heavily from the chair in which she had been sitting and turned her back to him.

"Nobody should ever have a reason to," he replied tartly, and instantly regretted the words. His wife's shoulders sagged, and he could hear muffled sobs stifled against a handkerchief. Sighing, the younger Will crossed the room in three paces and embraced his wife, lifting her chin to place a gentle kiss on her curved lips.

"It's been a trying day," he murmured against her mouth. "Forgive me." Katrina unleashed the full power of her amber eyes on him.

"Only if you promise to love me," she said quietly, and William tightened his hold. Against her stomach, and his, because of their position, he felt the infant give a decisive kick.

"Come to bed," said the woman, and William followed willingly.

-

It was near midnight when Elizabeth's and Madeleine's shift ended. Soaked, cold, and worn out, the women made their way to the hammocks without so much as a grunt. Both of their palms were raw with rope burn; Madeleine's lips were cracked from dehydration, and Elizabeth's were openly bleeding in places. Joaquin looked on them with sympathy.

"Would you like me to get Fahzeri?" he asked, pausing before he settled down on his hammock. "He's the closest thing the _Pearl_ has to a real doctor." Elizabeth shook her head.

"Sleep," she said. "We all need our energy for next shift. I'll tend to Madeleine." The boy nodded and threw himself into the hammock; he was snoring before it stopped swaying.

"Come on Maddie," said the woman tiredly. "Let's see if there's a pot of boiling water in the galley." The battered women made their way slowly to the ship's belly; upon reaching the galley, they discovered that the room was abandoned save for a rat gnawing on a cheese rind. The rat was unperturbed by the women; _p__erhaps it's someone's pet_, thought Madeleine abstractly. Elizabeth scraped grime out of a pot and filled it with water from a barrel, setting it to boil. Struck again by her mother's confident motions, Madeleine recalled now that her mother had promised her a story, and that she may not have another chance to hear it until they had returned to Port Royal.

"Mum," she began hesitantly, "I think it's time you told me what's going on." A feeling creeping along Elizabeth's spine had told her the curious girl would want to know at that specific moment; even so, Elizabeth debated the telling of her secret. _In part_, she thought, _because it will destroy the trust she has in me. And in part… _her thoughts trailed off. _In part because she may want to leave me. _Elizabeth turned, weary, and motioned her daughter to sit down on the three-legged wooden chair next to the fire pit. She herself leaned against a damp wooden wall.

"The first thing you need to know," said Elizabeth, "is that I love William Turner, I love him very much." She bit down on her lip, breaking through a newly-formed scab and drawing blood. Her daughter looked at her intently; the pot in the fire pit spluttered.

"And we have been through so much together," she continued. "We've been to the ends of the earth together, you know, and… and fought against things, things so strange…" she trailed off, and Madeleine wondered privately if the stress of the day had affected her thoughts. Some small part of her, however, knew that her mother was finally going to deliver the whole truth; the truth that caused her parents to engage in so many civil hostilities across the dinner table, the truth that made her brother Will hate her and her brother Jackson pity her. The truth about why she was different, why her hair and eyes were wild, why her skin was tan, and why she dreamed in salt water and stray breezes. _The truth, _she concluded, _about why we are on this ship in the middle of a hurricane, cleaning our bleeding hands with water boiling on a smoldering fire pit. _She turned her attention back to her mother, who was prodding the fire pit with a poker. The woman sighed, looking years older than she truly was.

"I don't… I don't remember when I first began to feel something for Jack – that is, Captain Sparrow – other than slight revulsion," she said, thinking back. "I can never forget when I first met him; he cut off my corset." Madeleine's eyes widened, and her mother paused.

"He saved me from drowning," she explained. "You'd have to have been there, I suppose." She sighed again, and Madeleine wondered how far back the story really went. Judging by the ease with which her mother worked on the ship, and by the look she threw the illustrious captain… _quite some time_, she mused.

"I was eighteen then, and set to marry Commodore James Norrington shortly after his promotion ceremony. I thought I was in love with Will, but he was a blacksmith's apprentice… my father didn't approve." Her gaze bored into Madeleine's, begging her to understand.

"You'll have to ask Jack about our first adventure sometime, I'm sure he'd have an interesting perspective. I ended up trapped on this ship, under Captain Barbossa – he'd mutinied, leaving Jack on an island and taking over the _Pearl_ –"

"_Mum_," stressed Madeleine. "I don't think we have time for the whole story!" Madeleine hated to interrupt, but the gale above was growing ever louder and they only had a few hours left until they were on deck again. Elizabeth nodded.

"Well, I ended up marrying Will – obviously – and after ten years and two sons, we settled down in Port Royal on Willowing Street. We bought the house from a crazy old woman who was trying to get to the colonies." Madeleine laughed, but encouraged her mother to continue.

"Jack – your brother Jack – was two or so when Captain Sparrow sailed back into Port Royal for the first time in ten years. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him, sauntering around the docks like not a day had passed. He stopped at Will's shop, and then at the house; I was in an apron, my hair in disarray, when the maid admitted him." Madeleine leaned closer to her mother, enjoying the story now; what kind of intrigue could have spawned between the two that the details of her mother's disarray were so important?

"Loralie made him stand in the hall, and told me it was someone rough-looking; I'd expected the butcher that day, so I thought nothing of it, although it struck me odd that he'd come in through the street door. I walked out in the hallway and there he was… Jack, that is…" Elizabeth's voice faltered and a pained expression filled her eyes.

"Leaning on the entrance table like he hadn't been gone for so long… it killed me a little," admitted Elizabeth. "I wasn't able to even say hello, I started to cry… I don't know why, really, just a stroke of foolishness, but I was there, sobbing like some broken woman, telling him I was sorry for everything. Sorry for leaving him, sorry for Will, sorry for letting him die." Madeleine, engrossed, wrinkled her brow; her mother had let the captain die? _Not possible, he's steering the ship and giving orders right now! I hardly believe in ghost stories, mum. _

"He's not a romantic, Jack. He looked at me without pity and smiled that sideways smile you've grown into, and told me, 'Lizzie, we're peas in a pod you and I, I and you. _Us_.' He'd said it once before, but I didn't pay it any mind. 'Think about it,' he told me. 'I'm still Captain Sparrow, still the… _captain_ of a ship, still able to perform the aforementioned ceremony. Although,' he said, 'this time, it shall be in my cabin, not… on deck,' he suggested, as expressive as always. Remember, Madeleine," said Elizabeth, startling the girl. "What I did was not right, and I expect that you know that." Madeleine nodded, anything for her mother to continue with her story. Elizabeth sighed.

"I went with Jack. I put on my oldest dress and just… left. Will was in the smithy, and I had Loralie send him his basket lunch. I left William and Jack with Corinne, the nursemaid, and pretended I was walking to Mrs. Chunning's house. Instead, Jack – my Jack, Captain Sparrow – was waiting on the docks for me – the minute I walked out of Willowing Street, he grabbed me by the waist and stowed me aboard the _Pearl_. There was a storm brewing, a lot like this one…" The woman smiled softly, as if the memory brought her peace. Madeleine was barely breathing; she was no idiot, and she could see where her mother's story led. Suddenly, the long day of labor and revelations did not affect her – exhaustion abandoned her body, and all that mattered was hearing her mother's story.

"I was with-" began Elizabeth, but stopped when she noticed that the water she'd set to boil was ready. Wordlessly, Madeleine held out her arms and hands as Elizabeth dabbed at them with a rag soaked in boiling water. _Good Lord, this stings_, thought Madeleine as she winced. Elizabeth finished her ministrations in silence, worrying her bottom lip until it bled again.

"You're Jack's daughter," she whispered, so low that Madeleine almost missed it. The girl's eyes widened and she saw her mother begin to cry. _I'm… my father is…_

"I'm sorry," sobbed her mother quietly. "I – I love him, Madeleine. I suppose you should know that. I'm a fool." Madeleine, shaking her head in denial, stood quickly. _I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming... _Suddenly, the room was too small – she dashed out of the galley, not stopping until she was too blinded by her tears to run any further. A warm hand pushed her hair out of her face and wiped away the salty droplets.

"Madeleine, _querida_, what's wrong?" Joaquin's voice penetrated her thoughts, and the girl sniffled mightily before clearing her throat.

"I'm the captain's daughter," she whispered, the words barely making their way out of her lips. "My father… he's a _pirate_," she said with disgust. Joaquin's eyes flashed, but he then looked at her sympathetically.

"Why don't you tell me the whole story," he said, leading the girl to his hammock. She nodded dejectedly and sat, starting her narrative with the morning's fight against the mirror.

"I was made during a storm like this one," finished Madeleine some time later. "My mother is an adulteress, and my father is a pirate." She spat the words, but her miserable mood made it impossible to make them as poisonous as she wished.

"The storm shows in your personality," said Joaquin quietly. He had been so silent during her story, she could have been talking to herself. His words surprised her.

"How do you mean," she asked, anxious to take her mind off her mother's confession. Joaquin smiled his crinkly-eyed smile and touched an index finger to her forehead.

"Well, you think with what's up here most of the time," he said, tapping her head twice. His finger trailed down to her breastbone. "But you feel with what's in here. You're passionate, like the storm you were made in." Without thinking, Madeleine clutched his hand and held it to her chest.

"And you?" she asked, the air in the room thickening. His dark eyes bored into hers, the heat of his body affecting her own. "What do you feel with?"

"I'm just a _pirate_," he said softly, calling up her disgusted words earlier. "What could I possibly feel?" Madeleine never released his hand, instead opening it and placing it over her heart. Her eyes were shining from the stress of the day, and her cheeks reddened with the intimacy of the situation.

"You can feel this," she whispered, pressing his hand to her chest. "You can feel me…" She took his hand away and kissed each finger, her soft lips turning up into a small smile as she pressed them to his skin. Joaquin was temporarily dumbstruck – who was this little minx, that she should make his heart skip beats and his skin break out on nervous, longing sweat? And so young…

_My father is the captain._

_My mother is Elizabeth Swann Turner._

_I was made during a storm like this one._

Joaquin put two and two together when he remembered a comment his captain had made, drunk, after coming back from a night at Scarlett's.

_"I find," the captain had said, "that I no longer enjoy Scarlett's company as I used to." Joaquin, then thirteen, couldn't imagine a night on shore without a night at the tavern and the men disappearing to the top floor with the serving girls. He'd usually sneak off with a tavernkeeper's young daughter or niece, and have his own fun._

_"Beg pardon, _capitán_," said Joaquin, unsure of what to reply. He began to walk away when Jack started again._

_"As a matter of fact," he said, slurring his words and clutching the side of the ship, "I believe I don't even have the ache for her company as I once did." Joaquin, despite himself, was interested. He tangled his feet in some ropes and hung there to listen. _

_"I met a man once… I could have sworn he was a eunuch," said Jack roughly. "But he had a girl, and I helped him save that girl… she told me I was a good man," he said, eyes blazing. Suddenly, he fixed Joaquin with a rabid glare._

_"Don't ever let them tell you you're a good man," he said in a low voice. "Then they believe in you… they have bloody _faith_ in you, and you're caught." Joaquin figured it was time for him to go, so he nodded and began to slink away. As he was scurrying down to the hammocks, Jack threw out a last statement._

_"Lizzie... Elizabeth," said the man, more brokenly than Joaquin cared to remember. That was the last thing the boy heard that night._

"I'm just a _pirate_," he repeated to Madeleine, at a loss for words. Her eyes turned up to meet his, and she replaced his hand at its previous position over her heart. A nervous flick of her tongue was the only thing that gave away the uneasy atmosphere in the room.

"You're a good enough man for me," she whispered, and the sound was barely out of her mouth before Joaquin's lips crushed against her own, taking her breath; he lifted her bodily into his hammock. Madeleine had only kissed one boy in her life before, Mistress Nott's nephew Ariam; she thought kissing was rather boring, not at as all entertaining as her tea-friends had described. _But this_, she thought giddily, _this is heaven_. Joaquin's hands wound themselves in her hair, and hers explored his body shamelessly through his shirt. Their dark eyes met often, crackling with intensity, each daring the other to go further. His calloused palms had just met with her hips when the bell rang for their shift. Madeleine pressed her lips to his jaw and then climbed off; their clothing was in disarray, and they struggled to right it as they pulled on their boots and fled to the deck.

-


	6. Misdealing

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

"I told her," said Elizabeth to Jack, speaking into his ear next to the ship's wheel. His eyebrows came together almost comically, and his dark eyes met hers.

"And did the bonny lass believe her perfect life with young William had been a lie?" asked Jack sarcastically. "What did you tell her – some mistake of fate made her the daughter of a man old enough to be her father's father? Dear grandpa, that's me," said Jack wryly. Elizabeth's mouth tightened.

"She wasn't pleased," was all the woman managed to say before the girl in question bounded to the upper deck.

"Not that I can tell," deadpanned Jack. It was easy to note that some change had taken place; Madeleine's cheeks were flushed, and her lips were swollen. A faint discoloration on her collarbone told Elizabeth her daughter would have a bruise there later, but the spring in her step denied any maltreatment.

"Looks like the boy eased the blow," remarked Jack dryly, and Elizabeth realized the figure that had followed Madeleine up from the hammocks was Joaquin. The woman squinted and realized that both had faint smiles, swollen lips, bright eyes and clothes in hasty disarray. Madeleine took orders from the bosun to haul back a cannon; with several burly men behind her, she strained against the metal, smiling softly at Joaquin who was lashing sails to the mast before her.

"Man o'erboard!" shrieked someone for the second time that journey. "Man o'erboard!" Elizabeth ran to help, tying a rope to her waist and diving out into the roiling, dark water. The figure was too far out to reach with a rope, and appeared to be unconscious. Salt water stinging her eyes, Elizabeth pulled the figure closer to her; it was a woman, in fact, black as coal, wearing what looked like an elongated feed sack.

"Haul back!" spluttered Elizabeth, yanking on the rope attached to her waist. The sailor Waring heard her plea, pulling against the current to bring her in. It took several perilous minutes of choking on harsh waves and treading choppy waters before the rope tightened and began to pull Elizabeth up the side of a ship. Halfway up, the woman in Elizabeth's arms coughed and opened her eyes; Elizabeth almost dropped her.

_You have betrayed the divine_, said the woman, but Elizabeth wasn't sure if she had heard it or thought it. _YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE DIVINE!_ The woman's eyes widened; they were pure, brilliant white, without veins or pupils. Long, black eyelashes framed them, and the woman's dark skin provided a greater contrast.

"Oh!" The woman broke from Elizabeth's hold, but instead of falling, she rose, slowly. She stood upright in the air and extended her palms; a blinding light encased her, the only bubble of calm in the terrible storm.

_This accurst ship will see the wrath of Kaôfen_, roared the woman – her voice rang out through the thunder, but her lips never moved.

_And the guiltiest of all hide their souls beneath them black waves, black as th' hearts what beat inside them! _

The world exploded; all the _Pearl's _cannons lined up in the center of the ship, each aiming at a crewmember. The thunder ceased and noiseless lightning struck the mast; with a terrible crack, the giant post split cleanly down the middle, seared inside by a heat much more intense than what should have come from a mere lightning bolt. Nobody on the ship moved, watching the awesome and impossible play of events unfold.

Another silent lightning bolt cracked the ship's wheel, very nearly taking its captain with it. Elizabeth surged forward in silent horror as the man swaggered unevenly away from the wheel, grasping a post with both hands.

"_OH!_" An anguished cry rent the air around the heavily silent ship. Before she realized it had come from her own throat, Elizabeth was flying across the ship, ignoring the heavy cannons spinning crazily to face her. Her golden-brown hair whipped her face and neck, and her eyes widened in terror as she watched the captain lurch to one side and fall heavily to his knees. He clutched his side, and Elizabeth had just reached him when a heavy spurt of blood spilled from his wound. The woman gasped; his entire side was charred and punctuated with angry-looking, deep welts. As she searched frantically for something with which to staunch the bleeding, Jack smirked.

"S'ok, love," he muttered, twisting the corners of his mouth up in a grim smile. Then, louder: "You've found me, Beatrice, lass. Come to drag me back down, have you?" The woman floated down to the deck; suddenly, her mouth opened in a soundless cry as she convulsed horribly, going limp only after dashing her head against the iron wheels of a cannon. To the crew's surprise, however, the bright light that had encased the ship followed the now-motionless body, obscuring the woman from view for a few moments.

_You have betrayed the divine_, said the light, and as it separated itself from the body, everyone could see that it had taken the form of a woman. Elizabeth's mouth hung open as she beheld the most beautiful of all sirens, a pale goddess with blood red lips and golden hair. She was nude except for a flowing sheet dropping from her right shoulder and wound about her waist. She seemed to have no compunction baring her breasts, and her pale-skinned arms rippled with lean muscle. She was unaffected by the rain; although she stood on deck beside the woman she had possessed, her feet were dry and her hair was flowing down her shoulders.

_You made a bargain,_ said the woman. Her lips finally did move, though it was difficult to tell; her brightness made it nearly impossible to watch her form. _You promised the first blood; the ninth circle awaits __**you**__! _Jack, pained, motioned for Elizabeth to help him stand. She almost refused but for his murmur - "'twill be all right, love," - and he struggled to his feet, blood spouting from his wound like a hellish fountain.

"Beatrice, lass, I didn't expect to see you so soon!" _Damn it all, he's joking!_, thought Elizabeth incredulously. The pirate smiled. "But there's a minuscule flaw in your argument. Minuscule, but present nonetheless." Elizabeth barely had time to register that Jack had _made_ a bargain before she registered that he was talking his way out of it.

"You see," he continued, "our terms of agreement were as follows: I keep my ship, you get the first blood _of which I am aware_." Elizabeth frowned. _First blood? Whose first blood? _"I get free reign of my waters," he continued, "and you bring me back my love."

_You sold your __**soul**__ for this bargain, Sparrow, _screamed the woman. _You will not find it so simple to talk your way out of it! _Suddenly Jack trembled; his body wrenched itself out of Elizabeth's grasp and began to contort violently. A slip of air escaped his throat, though not through his mouth. His audience watched in mute horror as a blood-red cloud gathered in front of Jack, fed by some essence ripped from his being.

"Jack!" The monosyllabic crack broke the moment. Elizabeth glared at the white woman and yanked Jack back into her arms.

"What is it you want?" she shouted coldly up at the messenger. "What does your master want?" The woman turned her light to Elizabeth; Elizabeth blinked back hot tears of anger and clenched her fists.

_It's of no importance to _you_, _she stated bluntly. _It is the vessel I am concerned with. _The spirit slipped back into the motionless body crumpled under a cannon. She opened her eyes, stood, and turned to Madeleine, who crouched, bracing herself against the whipping wind. In corporeal form she walked toward the girl, slowly, deliberately, unaffected by the wind and cutting rain. Reaching Madeleine, she raised an arm and gestured violently, stiff fingers curled up and out of her palm, fingernails grasping at the air near the young girl's neck.

"Mum?" asked Madeleine uncertainly, dark eyes polarized in fear. Joaquín helplessly put an arm around her waist; suddenly, the woman Beatrice swept her arm back, and Madeleine's life vanished with it.

"_Madeleine!_" Elizabeth gently put Jack down and ran to her daughter's side; Joaquín supported her in his arms, his face a mask of pained disbelief. "Madeleine," she yelled again. "Maddie! _Maddie!_" The spirit-woman smiled vindictively, and walked back to where Jack slumped on the floor.

_Your debt has been repaid_, she said to him, smiling. Jack narrowed his eyes through the pain, glaring at her.

"I will get her back," he murmured through gritted teeth. "There's not yet been a being to best Captain Jack." Beatrice smiled, her completely white eyes crackling at the corners.

_Then Kaôfen awaits you at the river Styx, _she whispered happily.

In a flash of blinding light, she disappeared, as did the storm – the _Pearl_ was on open water, not a cloud in sight – the sunset threatened to leave them in the dark – and Elizabeth's sobs broke over the sound of the smooth waves.

_Child of Human Love, have you yet to meet Divine Reason? Child of Human Love, have you yet to meet Earthly Concern? Child of Human Love..._

Madeleine woke.

_Child of Human Love..._

Her eyes adjusted.

_Child of Human Love..._

"What...?" Around her, a series of macabre images floated – men chasing half-nude women – animals morphing into humans – weapons and blood – bubbling pits of tar – horses with men's bodies – where was she?

_Welcome to Hell, little one. _She felt herself roughly lifted and thrown into a kneeling position; before her, out of the bubbling tar rose a great reeking beast, all man and musty fur, dust and dirt, grit and sweat, and horns – terrible horns of black onyx, shining sinisterly.

_Madeleine Pearl Sparrow_, boomed the beast, _you have reached your rightful place_! He roared then, spewing out great and ghastly chunks of flesh and bile. The rotting stench of the wind almost made the girl pass out; she found herself dizzy, with no way to steady herself – _no way out_, chanted a little voice inside her head, _no way out, no way out_ – and suddenly straightened, finding herself in a completely different place.

_This is the Island of the Forsaken, _said a different voice. _Here you will find all of those that sold their souls to the devil in return for his ever-gracious favors. _The source of the voice suddenly appeared before Madeleine; a bat, twice her size and with nearly invisible eyes, landed several feet away.

_Your soul was taken unfairly, little one, _commented the bat without sympathy. _Even so, you must pay the price for the sins of your fathers. This is the rest of your eternity... _

Sudden pain throughout her body caused Madeleine to writhe and look down at herself.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" She screamed and screamed, shrilly, in a panic, again and again.

_Welcome to Hell, little one._

Her body was decomposing, rotting down over her bones, falling, tearing as she struggled to understand. Her hair was falling out in clumps, scalp shrinking and ripping ; her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, and suddenly there were no sockets, just eyes, and the veins in her neck popped until only a bloody mess held her body and head together, and it all happened so fast that the world began to swirl before her, only there was no world, just the bloody beating pulp pulsing with patches of hair and skin and the last vestiges of life draining away...

Madeleine drowned in her screams.

Elizabeth woke with a start, crying, beating her maltreated hands against the wood supporting her hammock. She went on that way for a while, until rough brown fingers pried her fists apart and put them down.

"Put that energy toward finding Madeleine," said Jack, uncharacteristically weary and gentle. Elizabeth turned to look at him quietly; his breathing was shallow, impaired by the wound in his side, and his dark eyes were dull with pain.

"What did you do, Jack? What godforsaken bargain did you deal _this_ time?" Elizabeth's voice held no anger, no intensity, no fire – instead, it was the embodiment of pain, deep and charged. Her eyes could not hold his; her hands trembled with weakness, and her shoulders shook as silent sobs racked her frame.

"_This_ is why I didn't tell you," she said suddenly, venomously. She found strength in her pain. "_This _is why I didn't trust you with Madeleine. I knew you'd end up trying some sort of misguided fatherhood that would come into conflict when your _precious _ship was threatened -"

"Shut up."

"- and you'd _never_ be able to handle the responsibilities, _never_-"

"Elizabeth."

"- because you're nothing but a vagabond, a rotten scoundrel-"

"_Enough_," said Jack, grabbing Elizabeth's wrists with one broad hand and forcing them down. With his free hand, he tilted up her chin. "Look at me, Elizabeth," he murmured. She couldn't force her eyes to meet his; instead, she looked to the side, tears streaming down her face freely.

"_Look at me_," he stressed, pulling her face toward him. She finally did lock eyes with him, but her gaze was flat and vacant; the light had gone out of it when Madeleine slumped on the deck, relieved of her soul by a demonic tax collector.

"It's very bad manners to judge a situation when you know nothing about it," he said roughly. His lips tightened, the only visible sign of his anger.

"You've never given me a reason to trust you, Jack," said Elizabeth. She saw that her words had wounded him, but she was just as wounded by his double-dealing. "When you left -"

"If I recall," he interrupted, "it was you, bonny lass," he indicated her, "that left _my_ ship before dawn to return to _your_ husband and _your _children and you_r_ life on land." He fixed her with a look, _that_ look, the same look he had given her after she tied him to the mast that fateful day...

"I believe it is _I_ who have been wronged, perhaps more so in being denied the privilege of even knowing my daughter." Elizabeth slumped and dropped her head.

"Jack..."

"No, love. It's time you went back to Port Royal," said the man, hefting his bloodied form to a more comfortable position on the hammock. Elizabeth frowned and sat up, facing him.

"Don't give me that delightfully hurt and heart-warming glare," said the pirate. "Every time you're on my ship, something goes woefully wrong." Elizabeth held the glare a moment longer, but it was not so easy to defeat the dejected, painful heaviness seeping through her veins. Jack looked at her without seeing, his brain calculating, planning, running through indefinable and infinite probabilities and semantics, anything that would help him save his daughter.

"Pieces of eight," murmured Elizabeth, and he looked up, prompting her to say more.

"Pieces of eight, your piece of eight, we can call together the Brethren Court and-" the look on Jack's face stopped her rush of words, but her eyes pleaded. "I need to find her, Jack, she's my life, she's always been my life…"

-


	7. Illusion

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

She could see again.

Someone was laving her skin with a cool, damp cloth. Methodically, from her toes to her scalp, a thin oily substance eased her burning body. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat proved too dry. A papery croak was all that rustled out. _Hold still_, said a quiet voice. It seemed the voice was speaking directly into her mind, an experience she found somewhat disconcerting. _Drink this_. A hot, tasteless liquid steamed through her cracked lips and trickled down into her throat. She swallowed dutifully, craning her neck a bit to take in her warden.

"Who- who are you?" she managed feebly. The boy shook a head full of shaggy brown hair and locked his too-green eyes squarely on hers.

_I am Damien_, he replied in his strange telepathic way. He seemed at once solid and insubstantial, fading from clarity to darkness and back to clarity even as she watched. His light skin was scored with holes and burns save for his face; his face carried only a single scar stretching from his right ear to the right corner of his thin mouth. Almost afraid to ask, she looked at him and then looked away.

"Where am I?" His face remained unperturbed even as he picked up a new cloth and dipped it in salve. _It is better I do not tell you_, he replied after a time. _Then, if they question you, you cannot lie._ Painfully, she sat up, and noticed that she was in a cave whose mouth, a good three hundred feet away, was barred by jagged icicles. Despite the apparent cold, she felt comfortable; she noticed, too, that the boy wore nothing but a brown tunic cinched by a rope belt. She tried again.

"Why am I here?" she asked, as the boy patiently rubbed down her legs with the cooling oil. He motioned for her to lie back down. _I will explain what is safe_, he replied firmly, continuing on to her stomach. Subdued, entranced, she watched as he completed his ministrations. He returned the cloth to a basket next to him, and moved to kneel by her head. _I am Damien_, he repeated. _I am the son of Lucifer and Megara. On the Middle Plane, I lived a half-life; scorned by my peers because I would not speak, feared by my family because I could turn the harvest to rot and kill healthy livestock by walking through the field._ _The weather responded to my anger, and death followed wherever I chose to tread. _Although his tone was not bitter, she could see a pained expression warring for dominance over his face. _My mother killed me, _he continued matter-of-factly. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, but he waved her quiet. _I was fourteen then, and she was desperate; and when I woke, I was bring stripped of my skin in this… place. Only the mercy of my father allows me to inhabit this nightmare in relative peace. _Where she had been spilling over with questions moments before, Madeleine suddenly found herself afraid to speak, afraid to consider even a fraction of the pain in the boy's intense eyes.

"How is it- how is it you came to find me?" she finally ventured, struggling again to sit up. He propped up her back without comment, pushing a pile of dirty leaves under her for support. _You have been greatly wronged_, he replied.

"Yes, that beast did say-"

_My father will kill you if he finds you here, _he interrupted matter-of-factly._ Your father made a bargain during a storm, years ago. Should he be willing to give up his firstborn, your father would keep his ship – and my father would return his love to him. _Madeleine's face twisted into an ugly mask of anger.

"My father is as capable of loving as my mother is of being faithful," she spat. The boy looked at her sadly. _I have seen into your soul, Madeleine Pearl. You are destined for greater things. _He straightened and squared his shoulders.

_I am going to help you find your freedom. _

Joaquín lay in his hammock helplessly, lost in his miserable thoughts. Madeleine's still body was imprinted in his mind; the harsh gesture from that _thing_, that – Goddess? Spirit? – that had rid her of her life so quickly; the howl her mother had emitted; and the captain's face.

The captain.

Because the storm had cleared, Jack left Gibbs in charge and gently scooped up his daughter to take her belowdecks. The look on his tanned face was worn, grim; never had Joaquín seen the captain look so serious, never had the mood aboard the Pearl been so somber. It was an impossible thing, what had just happened, and yet – for all its impossibility – it was more real than Joaquín cared to admit. So deep was his focus that he did not notice when Gibbs threw himself into the hammock next to his, with much more force than anyone would have thought possible from a man who'd already been getting on in years when Elizabeth was a girl.

"Cap'n will save her, no mistake," said Gibbs to Joaquín, startling the youth. "There's never yet been anything to best ol' Jack." His echoes of the captain's words did little to reassure Joaquín; he'd seen with his own eyes and held in his own arms the girl whose life escaped her body.

"I only knew her for a few hours," remarked the boy, "and already I felt as though I she had steel in her spine… I wanted to protect her." His last statement was directed at no one in particular, but Gibbs paused in his readjustment of the hammock.

"With parents like hers," he remarked, "protecting her will be an eternal task." Gibbs pictured Elizabeth: a prim and proper eight-year-old on the crossing to Jamaica; a betrothed and unhappy eighteen-year-old thrown into the underworld of pirating, thievery and skullduggery; a blossoming young woman defending her blacksmith-pirate; a steel-backed pirate king with conflicting desires; a broken woman destined for life on land with naught but the memory of freedom. In the same moment he thought of Jack; ageless and eternal; having cheated death time and time again; silver-tongued and black-eyed; a dishonest pirate and a scoundrel; a good man. A fallen man. Since his path had crossed that of the young Miss Swann, Gibbs had seen that neither hell nor high water would stop them from living out their hopelessly damned love story – for Captain Jack Sparrow had never before that met his match in a woman. Even Calypso had resigned to his being, that _essence_ that was Jack. But Elizabeth had fought back. Even now, their broken-mirrored story was playing out with its cruel and ironic hyperbole.

Jack's daughter had been taken, Elizabeth's daughter had been taken.

_Madeleine Pearl, indeed_, thought Gibbs before drifting off. _They were daft._

The visions danced before her eyes, disappearing before she could focus – some strange intertwining tale weaving her life in Port Royal with her brief time on the _Pearl_ with her current state, all the while leaving her with only one constant: that shimmering, insubstantial tragic figure of a boy, barely touching her fingertips and guiding her through.

_The web of dreams shows everything and nothing_, he said into her mind. _Do not let yourself be drawn in. The moment you become a dream, you will cease to exist._ She focused on his fingertips touching hers and hunched her shoulders forward; as the dreams flitted more rapidly, they moved more slowly, fighting their way through tangible nonrealities that threatened to suck her in. Her senses were battered; the images tried to force their way in, and only her fingertips tied her to her destiny.

_One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness._

_Though it seems enough to condemn him._

The words flew at her, unbidden, and she hunched her shoulders to keep the vivid sound from distracting her.

_Do you really intend to kill the man who saved my life?_

Her mother's voice threw her; she lifted her head slightly and saw the fleeting image of her mother, much younger, soaked to the skin and defending pirate…

_Jack – the letters – give them back!_

_Persuade me._

Her mother again, dressed in men's clothing, her hat askew and her face flushed, demanding her due from the pirate.

_You came back! I always knew you were a good man._

_We're not out of this yet, love. _

Her mother's face, weather-worn, leaned in; taking a step, she tilted her chin up –

"Mum, _no_!" exploded Madeleine, losing Damien's grip as she jumped toward the scene. The couple grew closer and her mother's hands were reaching for him and the pirate, knowing full well that Elizabeth was Will's betrothed, lowered his dirty, salty face to hers and –

"_KEEP AWAY FROM MY MOTHER_!" yelled the girl, but as she shouted the illusion watered away and a deep blackness began to appear, an abyss that dragged her in, step by halting step, and she could not stop herself; tears running down her face, Madeleine watched her feet take her forward into the growing deepness of the black before her –

Something heavy hit her from the side and dragged her down; she screamed and screamed, but no one could hear her, the darkness was approaching but suddenly something hefted her up and, summoning a great calm, ran with her away from the growing abyss toward the stale yellow light fewer and fewer yards away.

_Are you whole? _Damien's voice reverberated in her brain as he dropped her. _Did anything get sucked into the illusion?_ Not finding her voice, Madeleine nodded that she was whole and reached out a trembling arm to thank him; surprisingly, her hand went right through his arm, and a cold, clammy ache shot through her body. She looked up to see the boy's green eyes glittering mirthfully.

_It takes a certain effort to solidify entirely, _he admitted tiredly. _I am weaker than a newly-born calf for long hours after, perhaps days. _Madeleine looked at her feet; if he was weak, and she knew nothing of this strange place, this Hell – how did he propose to help her? Realizing that his weakness was her fault, she blushed fiercely and angrily.

"I'm… I'm sorry," she blurted abruptly. She did not know if he had seen the images she had seen, and was reluctant to talk about why she had stepped into the dangerous memory-illusion, so her apology was truncated.

_He shows you the images so that you grow angry and regretful,_ explained Damien, dropping to his back on the hard, sparse little grass they had found beyond the cave's mouth. Although it seemed to Madeleine that they had traveled a great many hours, looking back showed her that they had made it barely out of the mouth of the cave where they had been. She supposed that the mouth of the cave had induced that nightmarish tunnel-vision; for although the jagged icicles closing it off seemed quite solid, she had felt no cold nor sharpness in crossing them.

_Once you are angry enough, it is possible you will want revenge or vindication… my father, _he continued distastefully, _recruits his soul-eaters that way. _Madeleine shuddered at the thought and did not press for explanation. Damien, on the other hand, put his shimmering hands behind his head in a posture of repose.

_We will not be attacked here, _he said finally, catching her gaze. His eyes were a strange mixture of heat and cold; although they were insubstantial chips of jade, they radiated wisdom and pain and warmth. At the thought of his eyes, another pair of eyes crossed her mind; black, quick orbs that absorbed everything and anything, missing nothing, dancing with laughter and smouldering with heat. Signing, Madeleine resigned herself to putting her hands under her head and laying flat as well.

"Will I ever see – my family – again?" she asked aloud, replacing her real question with an awkward generalized version. Damien's eyes bored into hers, seemingly reading the thoughts she harbored for the boy she had known only a few hours but had seen as someone she could easily trust with her life – and perhaps, if she ever escaped – her heart.

_I am only here to help you in whatever way I can,_ he said finally, carefully. He turned his luminous orbs away from hers, and Madeleine could clearly see his pale, raised scar against his young skin. His tone was monitored and flat; she could not gauge whether or not he was hopeful or sorry about his mission. She reached a hand out and placed it atop his shoulder; although it wavered a little, the solidity of his shoulder held.

"I wish there was something I could do in return," she said, her voice small, for she had realized that although she might someday be safe and happy in the arms of her family and those who loved her, this boy – her guardian, _Damien_ – had nothing to go back to but a nightmarish (indeed, Hellish) reality. His eyes met hers again, and she shuddered, for this time he had not obscured the intensity of his gaze. His pain, sorrow, shame, long-held and close, burned her face.

_Rest, little one, _he said, and sent his eyelids crashing down to relieve her.


	8. Vantage Point

Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

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"We've no way of returning," insisted the sailor Waring. His chapped, weathered face betrayed is dismay over the circumstances. His shift-partner Fahzeri nodded and gestured toward the middle of the ship, where the other sailors stood morosely around a heap that smelled strongly of sour milk and old eggs.

"He's right," said the second sailor with his pronounced Eastern accent. "The supplies are as rot as if we'd pissed in 'em, an' the rudder chain's somehow been disabled." They looked to him for an answer, a course, a heading – none of these being things that, at the precise moment, Captain Jack Sparrow could provide. They stared at him _en masse_, and he was for a frantic moment reminded of that day that he'd been convinced to give up his precious coordinates - and that night he'd been mercilessly mutinied against. Gritting his teeth and flicking his dark eyes from sailor to sailor, he finally shooed them away with an elegant twirl of his fingers. He could feel Elizabeth's eyes burning holes in his back, and when he turned to meet them, offering her a sly, false smile, she couldn't help but remember every time that that smile had preceded trouble.

"A slight delay, nothing more," he declared airily, twirling one mustache braid. The other hand was at the wheel of the ship, although what purpose it served was unclear; the ship had been stock-still in a horrid doldrums for nearly a week, and they had no manner of steering it anyway, what with the rudder chain gone. He turned until he was in profile to her, and glanced out of the corner of his eyes in time to see her roll hers grandly. Her mouth was twisted into a sneer of disappointment; her eyes were red and the skin around the wrinkled and chapped; she had been crying many, many tears of late. He thought it was rather a wonder that she hadn't collapsed, himself; but then, the Elizabeth Swann - no, Turner - that he knew had always had more steel in her spine than most men of his acquaintance.

"How far are we from land, _Captain Sparrow_?" she inquired in a clipped tone. "_Any_ land?" Joshamee Gibbs, having come to stand behind Jack until orders were announced, winced at her voice. It had been a long time, after all, since the girl had called the man anything but "Jack," and he was unaccustomed to hearing her use his title so... insultingly. The Captain, however, seemed unperturbed; turning to Gibbs, he gestured ambiguously before him, in no specific direction.

"Mister Gibbs," said Jack, placing his hat on his head. Pausing for a moment, he frowned, took the hat off, rearranged some sun-bleached dreadlocks, and replaced it. The older man squinted at him.

"Aye Cap'n?" Jack went back to his mustache, long, elegant fingers twirling and twirling the tiny braids. These nervous ticks were nothing like Jack's usual sun-drunk locomotions; instead, they belied an insistent feeling of anxiety and dread, one that had already permeated the atmosphere of the _Pearl_ once it had become clear that they were well and truly stranded in open water, with no way to move. The captain stopped for a moment, and then seemed to remember that he had been about to give orders.

"See that this deck is swabbed an' that the Pearl sparkles like she was just built and about to sail her maiden voyage. I mean cannons, deck, brig, everything." Gibbs looked incredulously around him; aye, the _Pearl_ was shipshape - but _clean_? The railing he was holding onto probably had salt and dirt caked inch-deep on its surface!

"Aye… Cap'n?" Jack stopped twirling and pierced the sailor with a sharp gaze.

"Was any part of what I said unclear, misunderstandable or otherwise incapable of being turned into orders for my crew, Mister Gibbs?" he asked, his voice unusually serious. The other man gulped and shook his balding head, for once shaken even of his squint.

"No, Cap'n," he replied.

"Right then," said Jack. "Run along. Shoo." Once the man was gone, the captain of the _Black Pearl_ turned to his once-paramour, a one Elizabeth Turner née Swann, who was still glaring daggers at him from her vantage point on the other side of his ship's wheel. He took a dramatically deep breath, expelled it, and put one hand over his compass and the other on the hilt of his sword, shuffling slightly closer to his audience.

"Elizabeth," he began. "Lizzie…" Her look had turned stony and mulish, not the best for listening, but what he had to say was rather important. He waited until her eyes were looking directly at him, searing from beneath her hat, before he continued. "I have several pressing questions with which to question you," he declared. His dark eyes darted to meet hers from beneath his kerchief, and he saw that his eloquent non-eloquence would get him only so far with her. "They are vital to finding our lass." He knew this was his ace in the hole, and although it infuriated Elizabeth that he was using Madeleine as a ploy to get her to listen, she could do nothing more than press her lips together and move a hand unconsciously to her sword.

"Say what you have to say, Jack," she replied tersely, eyes flashing. The pirate peered at her, seemingly satisfied with her response, and flipped his compass open and closed, open and closed.

"Firstly, if I may," he began, "I'd like to establish that you are indeed well and truly angered with me and despise me more than you have ever despised anyone. Ever." The woman glared.

"Established," she spat, and the pirate winced a little at her lack of hesitation, sending his sword hand dramatically to cover his heart as though in pain.

"Secondly," he continued, clearing his throat, "I wish to ascertain that you are bunking with the crew, rather than in my personal quarters, due to said and aforementioned anger over my deemed despicable actions." Elizabeth's eyebrows shot up and together in confusion and anger. Her grip tightened on her sword, pressing the complicated inlay Will had so lovingly designed into her palms.

"It's true," she confirmed slowly. "What –" Jack held up a grimy palm and swayed, silencing her. His thumb rubbed nervous circles on the compass.

"Thirdly – and most importantly – I need to know that you are entirely willing to do whatever is necessary to save our lovely Madeleine- and I mean anything at all that is necessary to save her, savvy?" Elizabeth had lost patience with him, and pressed her face practically into his.

"Anything, Jack, have you heard nothing of what I've told you? But why –" Her face had grown closer and closer to his with the last response, and he rather mourned the loss of its heat when she pulled away. He suspected, however, that his next course of action would require some distancing of a similar sort; and so he said and did nothing to make her come close again. It would be his safest option… perhaps... assuming that everything went as planned... assuming he had a plan.

"Black sails!" cried the lookout. "Black sails on the horizon!" The crew looked to Jack, who had thrown up his hands and faintly smiled, but he did not respond for long moments. He seemed almost to be praising someone, a circumstance strengthened when he put his palms together and closed his eyes in supplication. Looking between captain and crew, a red-faced Joshamee Gibbs catapulted into action.

"Ready the guns!" he shouted. "Once we're in range, fire at will!"

"BELAY THAT," bellowed the captain finally, opening his eyes. Gibbs threw up his arms and looked at him.

"But Cap'n," he shouted back, "they're headin' for us right an' true, black sails, no guns in sight yet but no flags either –"

"I said belay that, Mister Gibbs," said Jack loudly. "I am the captain of this ship, and as such, I command, give orders, provide instructions, and lay out guidelines, are we clear? Continue to clean up the _Pearl_, and keep to your own – owns – respectively speaking." He eyed each member of the crew fiercely, as though they would dare speak out.

"Wind in the sails," squawked a parrot that had once belonged to Mr. Cotton, but after his death had chosen the _Pearl_ for a home rather than a life on land. "Wind in the sails." The crew appeared to be dumbstruck; some looked simply vacant, while others looked anxious, doubtful, or downright confused.

"The parrot is right. We remain calm. Trust me. I'm captain." With no further explanation, he took his compass out an flipped it open, and Gibbs turned back to the crew.

"You heard the cap'n," he bellowed with all the force in his lungs. "Get her to sparkle! Move, ye scurvy dogs, we've orders to follow!" Elizabeth had been neglected throughout this exchange, but remedied that situation by elbowing her way into Jack's line of sight. She put her hands on his shoulders, dragging him down to her eye level.

"Jack," she hissed, "What are you doing? Every pirate on these seas wants you _dead_!" She frowned at him and shook him by the shoulders like a daft child. "What ship and captain are you allowing to get so dangerously close to that objective?" Her sibilant hiss was doing funny things to his insides, but rather than let her see it, his straightened to his full height and towered several inches over her head.

"That," he declared, meeting her eyes with his dark ones, "would be the _Queen Anne's Revenge_." His hands grasped her roughly, pulling them so that her palms rested on his coat lapels. "And because you once loved me, and because you still love Madeleine, _and_ because, despite wanting to kill me a second time, you need me to get her back – because of all of those things, you will be civil to her captain." Elizabeth was confused, a feeling she hated, but the captain offered nothing by way of clarification; instead, he released her hands and turned back to the wheel.

"Although," he mused aloud, "it would benefit you to work on your swordsmanship... swordswomanship..." Elizabeth, one hand on the railing, felt as though she had been given a child's puzzle - the wooden one she had once, where she had to match up the alphabet on every side before it opened to reveal a trinket. _Right now, I am at the matching stage_, she thought, frustrated, and stalked from the wheel to the main deck to help the men.

Gibbs, who had tucked himself under the stairs for a toddy, almost choked on his flask as he heard the exchange.

The _Queen Anne's Revenge_.

Was Jack _mad_?

A chill descended on his old bones as he strained his eyes for those black sails on the horizon.

"Mary, Jesus and Joseph."

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From some hundred yards away, the captain of the _Queen Anne's Revenge_ clicked a telescope closed angrily. From where the captain stood, it had appeared as though a fellow, well-known captain, one Captain Jack Sparrow, had been embracing someone at the wheel of his stilled ship. The other figure had stiffened, allowed itself to be drawn close, and then stalked away - no, not _it_ - _she_, for the figure's hat had revealed her long, dirty blond waves and high cheekbones.

"Look alive, men." The order slipped viciously from pursed lips. "It appears we have finally found our friend Captain Sparrow, and we are long overdue for a visit."

The crew sped up as the wind whipped the captain's hat off, releasing long, think, mahogany waves that hung past shapely shoulders.

"Aye, Captain Angélica!"


End file.
